Spansion Courts Carmakers With Cortex-R5-Based MCUs

PARIS — In hopes of gaining a sizable share in the growing automotive chip market, Spansion Inc. is rolling out a new family of automotive MCUs, called Traveo, based on ARM Cortex 5 cores.

The move leverages the MCU and analog businesses Spansion acquired from Fujitsu last summer, combining them with the company’s own flash memory technology. Spansion is adding the new Traveo family MCUs to its existing microcontroller product lines that include Fujitsu’s proprietary MCUs and ARM Cortex-R4-based MCUs.

Saied Tehrani, Spansion’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, said in an interview with EE Times, “I believe we’re the first company to use ARM’s Cortex-R5 in automotive MCUs.” The higher performance of the Cortex-R5 core, its speed in particular, will be a real advantage for the company’s new automotive MCUs, said Tehrani. Further, the Cortex-R5 processor’s dual core configurations, which allow lock-step redundant core for safety critical applications, are also effective for the two cores “to monitor each other,” Tehrani added.

According to IHS, a market research company, Spansion entered the top 20 rankings for automotive MCUs in 2013 in seventh place.

Spansion still remains a niche player in the overall automotive MCU market, since the company participates only in certain segments. However, the Spansion CTO emphasized that his company’s products are “well represented” -- sometimes with a 35 to 45 percent share -- in specific automotive segments such as cluster/dashboard, HVAC, and body electronics.

Twin-motor controller for HEV and EV Spansion, throughout this year, plans to launch different members of the Traveo family -- each dedicated to a specific segment of the automotive applications. The MCUs include twin motors, body electronics, and cluster.

Spansion today rolls out its first Traveo MCU, called MB9D560, designed as a twin-motor controller for hybrid vehicles (HEV) and electrical vehicles (EV).

It will be first deployed in a 2015 model car by a Japanese automaker. Tehrani, who declined to name names, said the Japanese company will launch within the next few months a car with Spansion’s twin-motor controller.

How Spansion's Traveo Family of Automotive MCUs will be used in a car
(Source: Spansion)

In the MCU’s dual structure, one core looks after the motor of a car while another monitors the generator. Integrated on the MB9D560 MCU are resolver sensors for motor control and unique hardware IP for motor control operations, according to the company. The sensors, while the car is driving, identify the exact position of the motor, and feed it back to the MCU. That information, in return, helps coordinate the power provided by the generator.

As pointed out by some of the earlier comments, Spansion is not the first to the market with an R5 core. While Spansion may provide misleading comments about their products, EETimes needs to confirm their veracity before publishing; you cannot just publish something verbatim! Though, this is not the first time this correspondent has been doing this. Sorry to say, these are poor journalistic standards.